McKenna joins Dentons, which continues to look for future merger partners
The merger between law firms Dentons and McKenna Long & Aldridge is finalized, Bloomberg BNA reports, resulting in the firm having 21 United States offices.
The firm will be known as Dentons US, according to a press release, and brings together 1,100 lawyers and professionals.
“We’re trying to build the law firm of the future,” Joe Andrew, Dentons chairman, told Bloomberg. “We believe the quality question that people ask us, ‘Do you have the right person we need?’… is going to have a quantity answer: You need to have more lawyers, and more expertise, to get disputes solved and deals done.”
A proposed merger between the two firms in 2013 failed, according to the article, because it did not have enough support from McKenna partners. Seventy-five individuals left McKenna in advance of the recent mergers, Bloomberg BNA reported.
“All of the significant groups were planned, and there was nothing unanticipated in any of those departures,” Elliott Portnoy, Dentons’ global CEO, told Bloomberg BNA. “There were some individual lawyers who had some client conflicts that could not be successfully navigated.”
According to the article, Dentons continues to look for other merger partners, both domestically and globally.
